1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a log-in method for terminal stations in a telecommunication network, a main station and a terminal station adapted to perform the method.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Such a log-in method, main station and terminal station which are adapted to perform such a method are already known in the art, e.g. from the article `Asynchronous Transfer Mode Transmission on a Passive Optical Home Network` from the author M. J. M. van Vaalen from the Royal PTT Nederland N.V. This article is published in the Symposium Record on Cable TV Sessions of Jun. 14, 1991, pages 97-107, CCITT. More particularly, paragraph 6 of this article describes an access mechanism or log-in method for terminal stations, called terminals in the cited article, which are coupled to a main station, called HNC or home net controller, via links of a telecommunication network which is a passive optical network in the mentioned article. Terminal access or terminal log-in is controlled and granted by the home net controller which sends a log-in enable message, named polling information, to the terminals whereupon a single terminal, identified by the polling information itself, is allowed to reply with a so called setup message or identification message. The single terminal transmits the setup message only when it is connected to the home net controller and when it desires to become operational in the network. All terminals known by the home net controller are polled regularly and only one unique terminal at a time gets the possibility to reply to the polling information. Such terminal polling may be very time-consuming, certainly if the number of terminal identifiers that has to be polled is very high. Moreover, for the fact that only terminals which form part of the telecommunication network and desire to become operational reply with identification or setup messages, no terminal will respond to most of the log-in enable messages broadcasted by the main station. A lot of effort and time is thus wasted.